![]() The city is populated with fast food everywhere. Even rural towns are popping up with them as franchises spread and continue to take over the country. Often times, fast food and convenience stores are all the supplement to ones diet in an area. With advertising hitting you in the face everywhere on TV, billboards, online ads, and more, each restaurant looks appealing to spend money on and therefore people do. Other factors that are appealing are the convenience of the food (by not having to cook or prepare a meal) and the generally inexpensive prices of these establishments. It is the quick and easy option, oftentimes the ONLY option, to take for many with lower incomes, keeping them in a constant food desert. Class may segregate different earning groups as well, creating a class-based food desert. There may be access to better food in an area but the only ones able to buy it are the middle class who can afford the organic food prices of Fresh Thyme, or Whole foods. It seems as though this is a backwards system, the wealthy can eat healthy, while the rest get stuck with fast food and big box groceries that accept food stamps. I personally can sympathize with the latter with big box groceries. The only items my mother selects to purchase are the ones on sale and inexpensive. These are your typical processed, frozen, preserved foods with no supplemental value. I think that people sharing in this solidarity are blind to the healthiness of this type of food even if they are shopping at groceries. Sure, fast food restaurants and frozen dinners have “healthy options” on the menu or in the store, but looking at it from a larger picture they are not healthy for a sustainable life. Most of this food is raised on feed lots in tightly confined spaces, making the meat unhealthy and loaded with chemicals. Most crops, that are later processed and preserved, are monocropped in fields where they spray harsh pesticides and chemicals to get the highest yield possible, not the best nutritional value. The Lower class is truly stuck eating unhealthily with food of no nutritional value. Many people in generally poor neighborhoods, do not own land or very much of it. Many are in condo or apartment complexes or small plots that the house takes up most of the land on. This makes it hard to find a healthy alternative to grow one’s own fresh organic food. Back in the settling days when small family farms were abundant, people grew their own food. This was fresh, organic, and self-sufficient. Today in an overpopulated world, there is hardly any land (nor any time in this fast-paced society) for these poor income residents to practice subsistence farming, making it hard to be healthy on one’s own. Many people don’t have a voice and are stuck in this model across the country. Perkins + Will is a company that will listen. They are dedicated to serving people of every social status in improving the lives of everyone through architecture and sustainable design. Diversity to them means moving beyond barriers and stereotypes of gender, culture, color, race, religion, age, sexuality, physical abilities, generational differences, and economic settings to form a team of talented professionals creating excellent work. It means matching the diverse clients and users we serve with an equally diverse design team. It means understanding how diversity affects design. It means creating a diverse workplace that attracts a diverse talent pool. They want to design for a sustainable future, and food is something that needs to be taken into account. They already have amazing buildings that are designed for our water stressed world, let’s see if they design for our food stressed world next, not only for the elite 1% with the money, but the lower class who are the majority of consumers. Designing better solutions for an end to food desertification in areas is needed, whether it be a modular scalable aquaponic greenhouse system, or designing low income housing with food growth integrated within.
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Research TopicsThese are articles or items that I have read and invested time researching to further develop my knowledge in the field of architecture and the built environment Archives
December 2016
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